Equifax refused to restore his credit score or explain why it dropped to zero, until Go Public started asking questions.

Only then did the company point to its little-known policy: If a credit file sits inactive, the consumer may be labelled “unscoreable” and their score reset to zero. Tregear says the last time he checked, before it disappeared, his score was around a more respectable 700.

Go Public has since found a major flaw in consumer protection rules — that there are no laws or oversight on how credit scores are calculated, leaving credit bureaus to do what they want.

Consumer advocate Geoff White says that gives credit bureaus too much power, with no transparency.

  • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    This happened to my wife too. She had super high rating like whatever the highest is 790? 800? She bought a telus phone and plan. They didn’t have coverage where she lived, Telus blamed the phone, the phone manufacturer said it was the service carrier. She cancelled her account because she couldn’t use it, so they charged her $300 cancellation fee. She refused to pay so it went to collections. She negotiated with collections to pay it and restore her credit that was suffering. Whatever they did ended up being a complete reset to 0, we only found out when applying for a mortgage and they were like, no you have no credit at all, like you never existed.

    • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      The highest I think is 900, I’m capped at 835 because I don’t own a house.

      The whole thing is a system to keep poor people poor.

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        The bank said no credit at all. As if she had never started an account.

        You read the article right?

        When he checked his Equifax account, he saw his score had been wiped to zero — without warning or explanation.